Lenny_da_Hog:Mission statements are actually important for policy writing -- The Preamble to the Constitution is a mission statement. It tells you everything you're trying to accomplish by establishing an administration or project plan.

Mission statements are crap because they're not binding, and everyone at the top already knows what they want -- to get rich at others' expense. For example, you can found a company on a mission statement to "provide our customer(s) with the highest quality product". That doesn't mean shiat to the manager shopping for a Chinese slum cheap enough to outsource the jobs. It's basically a marketer's playground to manage PR. You can have an atrocious field failure rate but the mission statement is gonna gush about quality and reliability. In fact, the shiattier the product, the more the bogus mission statement is emphasized.

The Preamble to the Constitution itself is a great example. It includes the words, "promote the general welfare," and, "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." Actually that's most of the meat of it (it's quite short), so its influence is laughable. We spare no expense on national defense, but that's about it. The rest of the Constitution is very dry and administrative so the Preamble has little to do with it, but my point is we don't take that thing seriously anyway.

I get ya, they can be a great tool for creating collective clarity. There's great uses for mission statements. But they're never used as such, and I mean never used as such. I've been in four industries (weird career path but it's true) and most people don't even know what their employer's mission statement is, though "the exact opposite of what the executives are doing" is often a safe bet. Well, except for marketing because they're paid to skull-fark it. And while I haven't been in politics, I'll bet most Congressmen don't know the Preamble either since it means jack and shiat to what they actually do.

Those are the ones that piss me off the most, as someone who did a lot of industrial policy writing and training.

Mission statements are actually important for policy writing -- The Preamble to the Constitution is a mission statement. It tells you everything you're trying to accomplish by establishing an administration or project plan.

Then along come seminar gurus pushing buzzwords to middle-managers who don't really understand what they mean. They diminish the importance by applying it to everything, and then when you try to train someone using the phrase "mission statement," they think they're being patronized and roll their eyes at you.

muck1969:there are so many useless office-speak word-salad lines to hate, but the phrase "with that said" pisses me off the most. there are better words or phrases that could have been used to describe if the previous statement is in support of, or in contrast to, the subsequent statement. using "synergy" in place of "teamwork" is a close second. the snark in this thread is inspiring.

I literally have to restrain myself from punching anyone who says "It is what it is."

/I do get a small bit of satisfaction picturing them on floor with a bloody face, though

CaitoStreet:Lenny_da_Hog: enthralledgeishagirl: All we need is a mission statement and we will be able to begin our journey

Those are the ones that piss me off the most, as someone who did a lot of industrial policy writing and training.

Mission statements are actually important for policy writing -- The Preamble to the Constitution is a mission statement. It tells you everything you're trying to accomplish by establishing an administration or project plan.

Then along come seminar gurus pushing buzzwords to middle-managers who don't really understand what they mean. They diminish the importance by applying it to everything, and then when you try to train someone using the phrase "mission statement," they think they're being patronized and roll their eyes at you.

I could not agree more. The only thing I hate more then mission statements being trivialized are poorly written mission and vision statements.

I watched a program back in the early 00's where Norman Schwartzkopf was being interviewed by a bunch of teenagers about the Gulf War. One asked him how he managed to hold the Coalition together, given that it was made up mostly of factions that hated each other. His reply was that it was simple. They constructed a Mission Statement that went along the lines of "Our Mission is to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Period." Everything else was either set aside or ignored as irrelevant to the mission at hand. I have always thought of this as the perfect archetype of a Mission Statement.

Most corporate missions statement are BS, and the people who write them should feel badly about themselves.

I get a shiver up my spine when I hear the word "proactive". I had a boss who always withheld crucial information from me when he wasn't actively misleading me about my project. Then he'd call me in his office and chew me out because I wasn't being "proactive" when I couldn't figure out what he really wanted.